strings and dreams / bramante y sueños

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger´s touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem to never find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am", and forms the core of personality.

In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach it´s peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softeness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try to guard on themselves.

In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.

from Dragonfly in Amber

Diana Gabaldon

How wonderful it is to be aware, to remember to stop, and remind oneself that inspiration can be found anywhere. How wonderful it is to find that awareness is a constant, unforgiving, yet loving task. Beauty is like a rusty penny lying between the cracks on pavement, just waiting to be found. It hides in the funniest places. It hides in soft moments, that can slip by unnoticed, if one is not alert. Today I found my beauty, my inspiration in a yawning kitty, the marveled look in my little girl´s eyes and in the old novel sitting on my bedside table. I wrapped it all together with string made of dreams and sighed, content and complete.

Que maravilloso es estar alerta, el no olvidar detenernos, recordando que la inspiración se encuentra donde sea. Que maravilloso es entender que el estar conciente es una constante, implacable, aunque amorosa tarea. La belleza es como una moneda oxidada, dormida entre las grietas del pavimento, esperando ser encontrada. Se esconde en los lugares más graciosos. Se esconde en momentos suaves que se pueden deslizar, inadvertidos, si uno no presta atención. Hoy encontré mi belleza, mi inspiración, en el bostezo de un gatito, los ojos maravillados de mi niña y la vieja novela que vive en mi mesa de noche. Lo envolví todo con bramante hecho de sueños y suspiré, contenta y completa.

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